Narva city officials accused the Narva Museum, which consists of the town’s old citadel as well as an art gallery, of illegally holding city property. The museum just recently received €3.5m from Enterprise Estonia.

Thanks to the support of Enterprise Estonia, the museum was able to start working on issues that had been pushed off for almost three decades. The renovation of the east wing of the old convent building as well as restoring its interior were subject to most of the work, ERR’s radio news reported.

The museum’s project manager, Anastassia Tuuder, said the museum was looking forward to having to offer a new attraction beyond its old permanent exhibition.

The east wing comprises about a third of the old citadel’s rooms and currently stands empty. Its restoration was halted some time in the 1980s, and will continue only now. The museum plans to place its new permanent exhibition there, which will focus on the history of Narva.

The new exhibition will be accessible for wheelchairs as well. All together the works are expected to be finished in some three years.

At the same time, members of Narva’s city council are looking into whether or not the citadel buildings and bastion walls changed ownership properly. The council’s committee on business and city assets is not happy with what they’ve found so far.

According to councillor Jüri Raud, it isn’t quite clear if the city gave up on this particular piece of real estate entirely, or if the museum was only granted the right to use it. At present, it looks like the council permitted the use of the citadel, while the local government handed it over to the museum entirely.

“This would mean a loss for the city, in other words, the city has lost some of its real estate,” Raud said.

Raud confirmed that the matter at hand was entirely legal and had nothing to do with a small scandal surrounding an architectural competition that had ended uncomfortably for one of the city’s councillors. The current project to restore and renovate the citadel would not be affected, Raud said.